With potentially six different quarterbacks going in the 1st Round of the 2024 NFL Draft, Thursday April 25th is shaping up to be an unpredictable night that has the chance to change the landscape of the NFL in many different ways. We know that for the first time in their franchise history, the Chicago Bears will be selecting a quarterback that is viewed as a can't miss prospect. We know that North Carolina's Drake Maye and LSU's Jayden Daniels will likely be the next two quarterbacks off the board, and we know that Michigan's JJ McCarthy has been gaining momentum over the last month or so. But who comes away with Maye, Daniels, and McCarthy — and for that matter, Washington's Michael Penix Jr. and Oregon's Bo Nix — remains a mystery. It's the NFL equivalent of a classic Whodunnit.
One team at the center of this juicy, multi-team mystery is the Minnesota Vikings, who right here at ClutchPoints have been linked to both Jayden Daniels AND Michael Penix Jr. over the course of the last week. It's been unclear what the Vikings would do at quarterback ever since they let Kirk Cousins walk in free agency, but now, with the Draft just ten days away, one ESPN insider believes he has a feel for what Minnesota is planning to do.
“Well I had the Minnesota Vikings moving up to get JJ McCarthy and JJ McCarthy has been red hot,” ESPN's Mel Kiper Jr. said on the latest episode of The First Draft podcast. Kiper continued, explaining, “He's kind of the guy trending up higher than our ratings suggested. So that's why I suggested the trade of Minnesota, who got the 11th and 23rd pick, to move up and secure a quarterback who may fall to them at 11, but he may not, so it's going to be how much do they view JJ McCarthy as a franchise quarterback that we have to have.”
As recently as a month ago, the idea of JJ McCarthy shooting up into the top five of the 2024 NFL Draft seemed unlikely. It was initially rumored that Denver Broncos head coach Sean Payton had taken a liking to McCarthy, and that the Broncos would consider using the 12th pick in the Draft to select the National Championship winning quarterback. But now the idea of McCarthy slipping outside of the top ten seems far-fetched. Kiper would go on to explain what it is the NFL is seeing in McCarthy, and it all does make sense.
“The competitiveness that he shows, the desire to excel that he shows, the leadership all that. The confidence, he has that swagger, all those things are why he's kind of the ‘it' guy.”
It doesn't hurt that McCarthy's former college coach at Michigan, new Los Angeles Chargers head coach Jim Harbaugh, has been serving as JJ McCarthy's hype man and elevating McCarthy's draft stock even before he took the job in Los Angeles. In February, Harbaugh predicted that McCarthy would end up being the first quarterback taken in the 2024 NFL Draft, and he followed that up a month and a half later claiming that McCarthy was the best quarterback in the Draft. Little surprise, considering McCarthy and Harbaugh won a National Championship together in Ann Arbor.
No matter where JJ McCarthy ends up, the success he had during his college career and his meteoric rise up draft boards will put pressure on him to succeed right away.
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